The Bell 505 Jet Ranger X program has now logged over 275 flight hours since the first test vehicle took to the air in November 2014. Bell Helicopter Photo
Development continues at a rapid pace on Bell Helicopter’s 505 Jet Ranger X program, with hot and high flight tests almost complete in Arizona and Colorado, the third test vehicle taking flight in Mirabel, Que., and the new 505 production facility in Lafayette, La., up and running.
David Smith, the Bell 505 Jet Ranger X program manager, told Vertical that the program has now logged over 275 flight hours since the first test vehicle took to the air in November 2014.
The 505, which marks Bell’s return to light single-engine helicopter production, was first announced at the Paris Air Show in June 2013, and an accelerated development timeline sees the manufacturer aiming for certification in early 2016.
The aircraft sports a high visibility cockpit and a fully flat, 22-square-foot cabin floor, with five forward-facing seats. In the cockpit, the aircraft features the Garmin G1000H integrated avionics suite, first introduced by the manufacturer on the Bell 407GX. Another retention from the Bell light legacy is the 206L-4 rotor system, although the 505 features improved torsion-tension straps and a redesigned system for mounting the rotor and dampening vibrations. And it was the performance of the rotor during testing that drew particular praise from Smith.
“We’ve been doing a lot of multi-bladed rotors for the last two decades or so, and the two-bladed rotor system is one our pilots are getting back accustomed to,” he said. “It’s very forgiving on all the things related to engine failures. It’s been a very interesting thing to watch as the pilots develop the techniques to use, and emergency procedures to use, whenever you have an engine failure — for certification requirements, you have to go develop all those things. The big surprise has been once you get the technique down, how easy it is to handle the aircraft in emergencies.”
Smith also said the aircraft’s hover performance was better than had been expected, and the pilots had been impressed with the visibility from the cockpit.
At the end of June, the first test aircraft took a 14-hour ferry flight from Bell’s manufacturing facility in Mirabel, Que., to Canon City, Colo., to begin high altitude testing. That ferry flight, which was the longest yet completed by the aircraft, provided the team with a lot of useful operating information.
“You really learn more sitting out operating in the airspace, communicating and changing channels, and all kinds of things that you don’t have to do a lot of in flight testing,” said Smith. “It was one pilot doing that [ferry flight] with a maintenance team member, and they said it was a very enjoyable visual experience. So the aircraft will be good for tourism, and certainly for our VIP private operators.”
Smith said the testing in Colorado and Arizona (where the temperatures in the latter reached 107 F / 41 C), was some of the most challenging in the campaign, but had gone so well that the offsite testing would be completed almost a month early.
When the first test vehicle returns to Mirabel, it’ll complete its final test — a 100-hour endurance ground run. “We basically tie it down to the flight deck and run it through a long brutal 100 hours of testing, where you do lots of overtorques and control applications, and apply rotor brake 200 times. So you do a lot of things that are pretty aggressive — abuse type testing that’s required under the regulations.”
The second test vehicle is set to begin the load development testing for which it was created this week, while the third aircraft is destined for certification testing for noise and handling qualities. It also has 15 kits on it. “As we’re flying the other certification data, we’re flying these kits tests as well,” said Smith. “So there’s a lot of multi-use on the aircraft.”
In addition to the work being completed in North America, Bell also has a team working with Turbomeca at the engine manufacturer’s facility in Bordes, France, on certification for the 504-shaft-horsepower Arrius 2R. “That is very critical to our certification schedule and timeline,” said Smith. “Our objective for the program was to get our flight testing and our primary testing for the whole program completed by November, and I think we’re well on hand to do that. That will give us a pretty reasonable amount of time to develop reports, submit them, and get approval for the overall aircraft performance.”
Concurrent to the aircraft’s development has been the creation of a new 82,300-square-foot production facility in Lafayette. Smith said the building currently had about a dozen staff working in it, and that it’ll reach its full staffing level of over 100 in 2017. “They’ve got all their occupancy certificates, and they’ve got the beginnings of the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] initial production certificate for the facility,” he said. “They’ll start [production] with some of our old 206 design parts, so that they’re mature, and it’ll be a good test of the facilities, the systems, the processes and the people. Once all that’s validated, we’ll get into the 505-specific content.”
When the facility is fully staffed, Smith said it would be capable of producing more than 200 aircraft a year. But, for the time being, he said Bell was focused on simply working its way through the current backlog of 340 letters of interest as quickly as possible. “We can’t give our customers the exact date they’ll get their aircraft yet, because we’re so dependent on regulation to certify the aircraft and the facility, but we’re doing everything we can to get the aircraft out quickly.”
Finally, he said performance and configuration updates would be released in the coming months. “I think when the true performance and all of the capability of the aircraft comes out, people are just going to be blown away by the value you get for the money.”
